A month and a half ago, Brazil lit up with protests as a million people took to the streets. The country is due to host the World Cup in less than a year (and the Olympics in less than three), but many Brazilians are increasingly unhappy with their government in the face of the impending soccer tournament. We reported on the eviction of indigenous people at the site of the Brazilian Indian Museum, and now another, more prestigious museum seems to have entered the fray: the National Museum Honestino Guimarães, or the National Museum of the Republic, part of the Cultural Complex of the Republic in Brasília.
Brazil
Posted inNews
Brazil Evicts Indigenous People in Violent Clash Over Sports Stadium
Brazilian police dressed in riot gear stormed an old museum in Rio de Janeiro last week with tear gas and pepper spray in order to evict some 20 indigenous people squatting there. The building, the former site of the Brazilian Indian Museum, is adjacent to the Maracanã stadium and set to be demolished as part of plans to renovate the stadium for next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
Posted inNews
Brazilian Government Gives Workers $25 a Month for Culture
If the NEA needed any more reasons to look inadequate, Brazil just offered one: the government has decided to give Brazilian workers a stipend of $25 a month just for “cultural expenses” — that’s anything from books and movies to tickets to art museums.
Posted inBooks
Brazilian Art Under Dictatorship
LOS ANGELES — Brazilian Art under Dictatorship, a new book by John Jay College’s Claudia Calirman, takes a look at the works of three artists: Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio and Cildo Meireles. These artists worked during the height of Brazil’s most repressive military regime in the late 1960s and early 70s.
Posted inArt
Stumbling Upon India! While in Brazil
There is nothing quite like the feeling of being a tourist in a new country, and stumbling into a city or neighborhood there that makes you feel like a tourist in a completely different country. It’s a bit like a person who visits New York City for the first time and wanders into Chinatown — that small slice of Chinese culture in the great American metropolis can act like a tiny transport to another culture.
This is how I felt visiting the latest art exhibition titled India! at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, (CCBB) in Rio de Janeiro. A tourist in Brazil and a stranger to Portuguese, I became for a few hours a tourist lost within the art and history of India.
Posted inArt
Colorful Street Art Gives Rio de Janeiro a Fresh Look
Graffiti in Rio de Janerio is some of the most festive, whimsical and lighthearted graffiti I’ve seen anywhere. Though the street art feels like it’s being taken seriously, the pervasive style is bold, playful, colorful, and full of bizarre scenes, stylized characters and undecipherable situations.
Posted inArt
Brazil On the Rise
Brazil is one of the fastest growing economies of the “developing world.” In fact, so much so that it is now considered an “NIC” or newly industrialized country, a term used to describe being in between “developing” and reaching “fully developed” status. Today, Brazil is looking towards a future as host to major global sporting events, the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the 2014 Soccer World Cup. Leading up to these events, global investment in the country is sure to rise, promising a healthy future for arts and culture on all levels of the spectrum.
